Preview

Com/220 Final Project

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1867 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Com/220 Final Project
United States needs to reform their policy on illegal drugs to save taxpayers money and give focus to more important matters. The United States drug policy is way past due for an overhaul. The current policy is outdated and continues to place a huge burden on the justice system ( Nordstrom, 2011). United States of America will benefit from a drug policy reform and a better look on drugs that could serve a medical purpose like Marijuana. The United States has a constant burden put on its judicial system by its current drug policies. Communities around this great country will benefit from a change in its drug policies. Other countries that have a more relaxed approach to their drug laws than the United States have, do not have the problems with illegal drugs like the United States does. Many of the United States drug policies have made its jails and prison overcrowded and dangerous ( Nordstrom, 2011). In all levels of government in the United States, the quest to stop the illegal drug trade and illegal drug usage carries a heavy burden on the American judicial system. However the time spent combating illegal drugs in not the only waste during this campaign. The United States spends billions of dollars trying to stop the flow of drugs into this country ( Nordstrom, 2011). The majority of the money spent to lock up criminals in the United States is spent on locking up nonviolent drug offenders. “In fact about five percent of drug users have used violence to obtain money to purchase drugs” ( Nordstrom, 2011). The United States may not be able to lower their deficit and release the financial burden on its judicial system without at this fact for a reason to have an illegal drug reform. Many of the illegal drugs that will be mentioned are not created equal. Marijuana for instance has been found by many medical personal to have no long lasting side effects. It is also common sense to know that Marijuana is not even close to being as dangerous as drugs

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Prison over Crowding

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Overcrowding in prisons is one of the biggest challenges facing the American criminal justice system today. The total population of prisons and jails in the United States neared the 2.1 million mark in June 2003, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S residents was incarcerated in prison or in jail. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s state and local governments got tougher on crime by passing legislation calling for mandatory sentences for repeat offenders, such as California’s “three strikes you’re out” law and New York and other cities adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Because of these polices the number of violent crimes has dropped. Unfortunately, one unintended consequence of America’s new tough stance on crime is that our prison system has become dangerously overcrowded, forcing prison officials to release violent criminals after serving only a fraction of their sentences. The current system used to relieve overcrowding has created a “revolving door” criminal justice system. The recidivism rate among those released early from state and county prisons is extremely high. In fact, a Department of Justice study found that 67.5 percent of criminals released from prison were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years (USDOJ, 2013). A Large portion of the overcrowded conditions in the prison system is a result of the” war on drugs”. This war alone costs taxpayers a large amount of money each year because new prisons are needed to be constructed to house the ever-growing…

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Substance Abuse - Heroin

    • 2142 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The Drug issues in American have forced the government to hold a zero tolerance policy when it involved drugs. These policies were created with the idea that drug use is all too common epidemic, that is increasing the grips on communities and this policies basis is to remove all of the illegal use of drugs all together. It’s never as easy as the foundation states no matter the way it is approached. The idea is to punish for the use, trafficking and creation of the illegal narcotics to make those whom consume, sell or create will be punished with jail or fines. The current investment is currently listed as 400 billion US dollars yearly. Even though the Government has made every attempt to limit this it has been shown that drugs use is on the rise, not just in North America, but other continents as well such as Europe and South America. Watch the television and listen…

    • 2142 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Legalization of Marijuana

    • 2091 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Gray, James P, (2001) Why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it: A…

    • 2091 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    While it has been observed and recorded that crime rates have gone down in the last thirty years, the correlation between increasing the number of prisoners and less crime is not significant (Kelly, 2015). This is due to the fact that more and more non-violent offenders have been imprisoned for minor drug related offenses that have only been interpreted as major offenses by poor policy regulation (Kelly, 2015). This only means that tax payers are progressively increasing the amount of money they pay for nothing other than a false sense of…

    • 1677 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Drug Court Case Study

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages

    According to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), in 2009 drug courts in the United States have saved taxpayers $8.3 billion in federal and state funding. Drug courts have also saved an average of $5,680 per participant, returning a net benefit of $2 for every $1 spent. These savings reflect measurable cost-offsets to the criminal justice system stemming from reduced re-arrests, court hearings, and use of jail or prison beds. (Marlowe,…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There is also a need in the manner in which law enforcement manages drugs and drug enforcement. This can be handled by making drugs a public health problem instead of a criminal one (Lozoff, n.d.). This can shift a majority of the drug problem onto other services and by decriminalizing drug use and possession individuals can get treatment instead of being locked up for a mental health and addiction problem. This would alleviate overbooked court rooms and prisons allowing for the truly violent and dangerous criminals to be placed in space that is taken up by less violent offenders (Lozoff, n.d.). In changing the way the system manages drugs and drug addicts the crimes associated with drug use can also be decreased or eliminated (Chandler, Fletcher, & Volkow,…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Drug Legalization

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Everyone will agree that the drug issue in America is prominent. After so many drug related crimes, deaths, and federal spending, debates spur with opposing views in the political arena on how to rectify the problem. One view on solving the problem according to Judge James P. Gray's proposal is to legalize drugs or as legalization advocates call it "harm reduction." This approach believes that drugs use is inevitable and the only way to solve the drug problem is through the legalization of harmful and habit forming drugs such as, cocaine, heroine, and marijuana. Through Legalization, James P. Gray believes drug use and drug related crime rates will decrease. After so many drug related deaths and crimes, America has come too far with the successful War on Drugs to consider surrendering to legalization and committing national suicide.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “No task is more urgent for racial justice advocates today than ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is its last.” – Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (2010) describes an American paradigm that encourages pervasive racial injustices that are beyond average comprehension. In particular, the “New Jim Crow” is a system that predicates current racial differences on past social constructs that relate and date back to slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. The mass incarceration of black men in America is not the result of a propensity to commit or an affinity for drugs and crime, according to Alexander.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Annotated Bibliography

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The article explains the approaches the Federal Domestic Drug Control can take in reducing illegal drug use. These approaches include stricter and tougher penalties.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Legalization of All Drugs

    • 1845 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The debate over the legalization of drugs continues to disturb the American public. Such an issue stirs up moral and religious beliefs, beliefs that are contrary to what Americans should believe. I ask all of you to please keep an open mind and hear me out on this very controversial subject. All of us have in some way or another been affected by drug, whether it is a family member or the economic burden on society. Americans often take at face value the assumptions that drugs cause addiction, which leads to crime. This is true but abundant evidence exists to support the view that legalizing illicit drugs can help solve the drug problem in America. There is not a way to stop drug use, however there are two ways to combat the problem, like we have been or to legalize them, the legalization of drugs would help the United States in the areas of crime, increase revenue, elevate over-crowed prisons and decelerate the use of drugs in American society.…

    • 1845 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    War On Drugs In The 1960s

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ultimately the new “war on drugs” had a negative impact on American life during the mid 1980s-early 2000s due to the economic costs, the strain put on our justice system, and the civil liberty violations that occurred. As with any other war or bureaucratic endeavor, money must be heavily drawn upon and invested. When discussing the overall cost of this “war” through this time, congressman Lee Hamilton stated that, “Federal and local governments spend over $3 billion each year to fight drugs.” (cite) In his quote it becomes apparent that the United States had become highly invested and arguably obsessed in a seemingly impossible “war.”…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Incarceration In Prison

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The use of incarceration as a system of discipline or punishment dates back to medieval times. For hundreds of years, critics and punitive experts within our society have studied, researched, and made changes to the physical punishment methods and restored it with incarceration. The passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 gave a crime control perspective that increasing arrests and punishments for drug offenses to have a profound impact on correctional populations and minorities (D.L. MacKenzie). Today, the U.S. has more jails and prisons than there are colleges and universities. In 2010, there were 2.3 million prisoners in the United States (C. Ingraham). There are simply not enough correctional officers to counter the smuggling…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Among problems the United States faces, one of the most prominent is the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. While the jailing of drug offenders does not seem so serious at first glance, under close inspection this proves otherwise. Among the flaws of this system, are the elevated crime rates that compare poorly to the rate of nations worldwide, the excessive budget wasted on housing these drug offenders, and finally, the sheer unconstitutionality of it all. By…

    • 1174 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Marijuana can be considered the most popular and widely used illicit drug in the United States. State drug policies have changed in recent years, however many American citizens still face prosecution for the cultivation, distribution and possession of marijuana. Despite the known benefits of legalizing marijuana on the economy and crime rate, the US federal government has still not changed its policy. The United States must acknowledge and change its role in the imprisonment and suffering of innocent people by legalizing marijuana on a federal level or the ongoing counterproductive prohibition of marijuana will continue to no avail.…

    • 2324 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Some advocates for validating marijuana have argued that the costs of legalization will keep the United States from spending tax dollars on the criminal-justice costs of marijuana law enforcement. This is simply not true. Research has found that the percentage of people in prison for marijuana use is less than one-half of one percent. More than 30 percent, of treatment admissions reported in the Treatment Episode Data Set, are collected from state-funded programs and are referred through the criminal-justice system. Marijuana is a drug abused by individuals recommended to treatment by the court system. The future of drug policy should not be a choice between using the court system or treatment. The goal should be to get these two systems to work together to improve both the nation's safety and health.…

    • 515 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays